5 Customer Data Management Use Cases for Hotels

The hospitality industry faces several challenges due to a lack of unified, actionable data. Alas, this means no delivering real-time offers during a guest’s stay or sending a customized survey shortly after checkout. Happily though, the days of marketers forced to rely on IT teams to achieve their customer data management and engagement initiatives can be put in the past thanks to a burgeoning category of technology called Customer Data Platforms, which were designed to solve that exact problem (plus so many others!). Want to learn more? Keep reading to learn five CDP use cases for the hospitality industry!

Decision
The time when a customer is looking up availability or price in any of your brand’s digital properties or partners is a crucial moment for marketers to engage and win the business. Not just any engagement will do, however. It has to be personalized and relevant to the customer in question! A CDP enables marketers to display information, content, or offers that would appeal to a specific customer based on any available information that is known about that customer.

For example, with a CDP you could set up rules to highlight certain amenities of the properties in the area based on the profile of the customer. You can also send the right offers by utilizing a customer’s past purchase preferences, his status, and room inventory. A CDP could also enable offers for non-room related services, such as restaurant or casino credits.

Post Booking
A customer booked a stay at one of your properties. Hooray! Now that the guest has made a reservation, it’s all about getting him excited for his impending stay and priming him for an amazing experience.

Similar to the decision stage, you may highlight the amenities of the selection the guest made, or take the opportunity to send the customer a push notification or an email indicating special spa events or a discount with a partner car rental company for the duration of his stay.

During Check-in
Desk agents, concierge services and/or customer service personnel are generally the first faces of a guest’s experience. Arming these individuals with as much information about a customer as is available, along with current campaigns etc. will enable them to provide a far more personalized experience.

With the help of a CDP, agents with authorization can provide discounts or additional points for use with a certain restaurant or service if they notice that the customer has used the service in the past. They can also tailor messages or an interaction based on declared or observed behaviors by the customer with the brand. For example: the customer gave negative feedback in a survey about a sister location; mentioned his upcoming stay on Twitter; had hit the swimming pool every day during previous stays or is a high roller on the casino floor.

During Stay/On Property
No matter whether you’re a luxury brand or a budget chain, it’s crucial to take steps to ensure that guests have a special experience if you want to drive repeat business. There are a few ways that a CDP can help with this.

For example: all property, partner and digital touchpoints can be provided with a single view of real-time customer information at the right time. Loyalty programs can also be leveraged for both earn and redemption across all touchpoints during the stay. The consumers of this information could be concierge services, customer service, casino floor agents, restaurant and bar POS systems, partner locations, customers etc.

On Checkout
A great customer experience can make it hard to say goodbye and seal the deal for your brand as the first choice for future travel. Send customers off on a high note by providing an in-app message about partner transportation services on the day of checkout. Shortly after checkout, present a survey that is tailored to the customer based on their operational profile (first stay, long stay, social media user, used the spa, etc.).

The customer can also get a quick snapshot of her loyalty program-related earnings and be prompted with a survey as they leave the property.

Dormant/Between Stays
CDPs provide brands the opportunity to stay top of mind among customers between stays. Based on past customer activities, specific customer segments can be chosen for drip campaigns for other locations, and the app can provide both generic travel and destination information based on expressed interest, and targeted campaigns based on criteria such as approaching tier status thresholds or events.

For example, customers that are close to reaching a higher tier threshold, or a point expiration event can be targeted with offers that encourage them to book a stay in the near future. Customers that are known to travel to a destination at a regular cadence, but have not done so for an extended period can be targeted for destination-specific offers.

Long-lasting customer relationships require hotels to deliver tailormade experiences across all channels at every stage of the traveler’s journey. Advanced CDPs make this possible by providing a single view of each our your customers that is actionable in real time, enabling marketers to gain time, revenues, and deeper customer loyalty.